Pen and Ink Reflections - Pen and Ink Reflections

waiting with desire

2/2/2025

'Illuminare' - award winning photo of myself, Josephine Inkpin, by Charmaine Lyons

Pink Floyd surely had it right about the vocation of love, in the closing section of the rock opera The Wall. For the vocation of love does not belong to Christians, never mind clergy, but to all human beings, but Christians, and clergy, at our best, can help point us towards it. As Pink Floyd wrote:

All alone, or in twos
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down, outside the wall
Some hand in hand
And some gathered together in bands
The bleeding hearts and the artists make their stand
And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall.

In my experience, ministry can certainly be like that. As it happens, the first music album I remember buying was appropriately entitled Walls and Bridges, by John Lennon. For core to my own ministry has been building bridges, and what the writer Ursula le Guin called the vocation of ‘unbuilding walls’. As I come to the end of my time as Minister of Pitt Street Uniting Church, I want therefore to reflect on such things, in the context of the Gospel story of the presentation of Jesus inside the temple walls. For in their own vocations of priesthood and prophetic love, waiting in holy desire, and glimpsing salvation in their own day, the old folks Simeon and Anna can still speak to us in our own spiritual journeys, now and for the days ahead…

the jester and the fisher king

11/24/2024

One of the great figures in British, not least Arthurian, mythology is the Fisher King. His origins are possibly in Welsh Celtic legend, derived from Bran the Blessed in the Mabinogion. Lively modern uses of the story include Terry Gilliam’s (1991) fantasy comedy drama, entitled The Fisher King, dealing with trauma and questing for love and healing in New York, and starring Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams – a portion of whose lines we heard earlier in our contemporary reading. For the myth continues to resonate with human struggles for personal and communal well-being, not least in the contexts of power and masculinity, and their effects on others. This is because of the mythic significance of the Fisher King, who is both the protector and physical embodiment of his realm, but who bears a wound that renders him impotent and his lands and people barren and blighted. Only the successful completion of a hero-knight’s task can bring the healing of his wounds and life-giving for all. At the end of the Church’s lectionary year, as we reflect upon God’s life-giving realm, and upon Christ at the centre, redeeming humanity, the Fisher King continues to open up perspectives for us and our own times. Let me therefore offer a few pointers to help tease out today’s Gospel passage and the dialogue between Pilate and Jesus related to the nature of power, kingship, and human flourishing. Let me begin however, with another story, about another king, and, especially, about a jester…

beyond embarrassment: the cry of the blind

10/27/2024

healing of Bartimaeus by William Blake

Deep faith is often embarrassing. Maybe that is a reason we human beings avoid it. We typically prefer to seek to live ‘good’ lives, or the opposite: to seek to be respectable in our opinions and behavior, or, alternatively, to find value and reputation in kicking against, or rorting, the system. Admittedly, in choosing radical pathways, we may also conceivably live out of the vulnerability of a type of deep faith. Yet that also risks centring ourselves in our own egos. Deep faith however is not only about letting go of human conventions but also about letting go of ego, into God in godself. The expressions of this can be quite embarrassing, even alarming. Maybe that is why organised religion, including much of our Uniting Church traditions, often tries to keep deep faith under control, in liturgy and in church life. Imagine, for example, if, like Francis of Assisi, we were indeed to heed Jesus’ to the rich man and give away all we have to the poor. What if, like the original Quakers and Shaker communities, we were to be so overcome by the fire of pentecostal love that we would literally move in the Spirit, shaking and quaking, in our prayer and witness? No wonder, faced by the zeal of early Methodism, that Bishop Joseph Butler famously told John Wesley that ‘enthusiasm is a horrid thing.’ That, surely, is not simply a classic English reaction to faith’s embarrassments. It also expresses much general unease about the consequences of letting go into God. For deep faith is beyond embarrassment, as we see in today’s Gospel story (in Mark 10.45-52)…

leaping in faith

10/13/2024

Byard's Leap

‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Today’s Gospel story (Mark 10.17-31) is a challenging one, and, in the poem we heard,[1] Malcolm Guite is surely right to ask each of us to wrestle with it and what God may be asking of us. To assist that engagement, let me speak about three things: about conventional human assumptions of security, about addressing our wealth, and about the deep call of discipleship. Each are certainly key themes of this passage and the wider Gospel. Firstly however, let me share a story from Lincolnshire, the English county in which I grew up…

what's the story?

9/22/2024

painting by Rod Pattenden from the Original Bliss exhibition at Pitt Street Uniting Church

What’s the story, morning glory? No, this is not the start of a tribute to one of the biggest British music bands of all time! ‘What’s the story, morning glory’ is indeed however not only a lyric and a song but the title of Oasis’ somewhat overrated but undoubtedly seminal album of the 1990s. The song, ‘What’s the story, morning glory’ is itself hardly the star of the album, but it is significant in naming our human temptations to escapism, the pursuit of transient pleasures and the will to live by a deeper meaning. For what is the story by and into which we seek to live our lives? This is at the heart of the questions posed by our two readings today. Not least in this Season of Creation, what centres and guides our lives?...

Wisdom embodied

9/15/2024

‘but who do you say that I am?’ said Jesus. What a question! How do we respond? Let us explore this vital faith inquiry a little bit this morning, also asking what the figure of Wisdom in our reading from Proverbs might have to say to us. And let us further ask what the question of the identity and purpose of Christ might have to say in relation to our own identity and purpose in this Season of Creation and Faiths for Climate Justice Week of Action. For how we name and understand the divine makes a big difference to how we relate not only to God, but to ourselves, and to the wider world…

but who speaks for the Earth?

9/8/2024

I invite us today to reflect on three things: on the divine justice we are called to share, on who are the children of mother Earth, and on who or what is treated as deaf and mute. Let me begin however with a song. For songs are among the abiding things I carry from the political activism of my teenage and young adult years. Not least these words:

The Land! The Land! ‘Twas God that made the Land.
The Land! The Land! The ground on which we stand,
Why should we be beggars with the ballot in our hand?
God made the Land for the people…

rejoice and play

8/11/2024

Powerful proclamation is at the heart of today’s Gospel reading (from John 6.35, 41-51). Let me therefore speak about three things in relationship to it: about Christian doctrine, chess, and two Reformed gifts; and about how they may each help us to rejoice and play in this our current season of gratefulness…

church beyond?

6/23/2024

Our lives and world are shaped by the stories we choose to tell, and how we tell them. That is one reason the study of history is so vital. For it makes a huge difference what we choose to include, remember, and carry forward in the story of ourselves we share. So what story about ourselves and our world do we want to tell, and to carry forward, on this 47th anniversary of the official founding of the Uniting Church in Australia? How does this reflect the vision of church as beloved community which we heard about in our readings (from Ephesians chapter 2.17-22 and John chapter 17.1-11)? And how, vitally, do we see this story developing in the future?

treasure in clay jars

6/2/2024

The writings of Paul tend to get a bad rap in progressive Christian circles. He gets the blame for the subjugation of women, the rejection of queer people and the affirmation of slavery. He is seen as a conservatising force, taking the early church away from the radical message of Jesus and turning that message into something more palatable to conservative Roman culture and thus enabling its spread. Some of that critique is certainly appropriate to the second century writings, such as the pastoral epistles of Timothy and Titus ascribed to Paul by much later writers. However, parts of Paul’s writings reveal a radical thinker, capable of reframing the reforming Judaism of his upbringing into an entirely new faith – a faith moreover informed by his own experiences of persecution and imprisonment. Today’s passage invites Paul’s readers to a number of fresh perspectives on God, creation, and the purpose of life, that continue to challenge our own thinking today. Let’s look at some of it a little more closely...